.NET/C#

Microsoft project code named “Velocity” is a distributed in-memory caching platform that provides .NET applications with high-speed access, scaling, and high availability to application data. Download the Community Preview here.

Microsoft announced the release of Microsoft Source Analysis for C#.“Source Analysis is similar in many ways to Microsoft Code Analysis (specifically FxCop), but there are some important distinctions. FxCop performs its analysis on compiled binaries, while Source Analysis analyzes the source code directly. For this reason, Code Analysis focuses more on the design of the code, while Source Analysis focuses on layout, readability and documentation. Most of that information is stripped away during the compilation process, and thus cannot be analyzed by FxCop.”

I recently got myself a nice ThinkPad X60 Tablet PC. It doesn’t come with a DVD-Drive and although I have an external DVD drive, I just can’t seem to find its power adapter. Argg!

In order to do this, you must have the following:

Windows XP installed on the PC you want to install Vista to.

Procedure

Log in into Windows XP on the PC you want to install Vista to.

Use Partition Magic or another partitioning tool and create a second partition for Vista. Make it a Primary Partition (don’t know if this is required but this is what I did). Format the second partition with NTFS. Your Windows XP installation will be left alone and you will be able to dual boot to it.

Create a folder (let’s called it "c:\VistaInstall") and copy all files from the Vista DVD / ISO there (either extract the files from an ISO image using a Virtual CD/DVD emulator like Daemon Tools, or copy the files from another PC with a DVD drive over the network).

Run Setup.exe from c:\VistaInstall.

Choose Custom Install and follow the prompts to select the second partition you created.

Follow the rest of the on-screen instructions.

As part of the installation, Vista Setup will copy the installation files to the new partition. After it reboots, it’ll have all the files there to continue.

After you are done with the install, you can delete the temporary folder c:\VistaInstall that you created.

Powershell

Software and Tools

Microsoft Expression Encoder is my new tool of choice to perform batch compression of digicam movies. Batch processing is handled very nicely, especially on my new Quad Core PC. I used to use MeGUI/x264 before, but it was just taking too much time to work through the various bugs and issues.

One of the best tricks to speed up Gmail IMAP access is to use offline mode in your email application. Offline mode is supported by popular email clients such as Microsoft Outlook 2007, Outlook Express (Windows XP), Windows Mail (Windows Vista), and Thunderbird.

While you are in offline mode, your actions are carried out locally and the sequence is remembered by the email client. Later on, when you get back online, the same actions are then executed on the server. Offline mode is much faster (think instantaneous vs. several seconds for each action) than online mode because the email client does not have to connect/talk to the IMAP server each time you do something.

Outlook 2007’s Offline Support

Not all offline modes are created equally however. One would think that Microsoft top-of-the-line email client Outlook (2007) would have better support for working offline than its little brothers Outlook Express and Windows Mail, but that’s just not the case. According to my own testing, Outlook 2007 is the worst among the three when it comes to supporting offline access. Specifically, you cannot copy or move messages in Outlook 2007 when working offline.

If you have read my article Gmail IMAP Tips article, you know Gmail IMAP is all about moving and copying messages. Lacking the ability to move/copy messages in offline mode reduces the usefulness of Outlook as a Gmail IMAP client by about oh… 90% right there for me! I have not tested Thunderbird but it think I does support moving/copying images while working offline.

My Current IMAP Client

I still use Outlook for its calendar and to synchronize with my i730 Windows Mobile phone, but for Gmail IMAP, Windows Mail (Windows Vista) is now my email client of choice.

If anyone reading this is from the Microsoft Outlook team, please fix Outlook!

Related Articles

Tips and Tricks

I can’t believe I didn’t know about this Visual Studio command before: File.OpenContainingFolder. Asmita A Wankhede mentioned it, but he left a few important details out. By default, this command does not have a shortcut, so you would have to assign one to it (try CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+O). Also, the "item" that this command works on is the currently opened item in the editor, not the selected item in the Solution Explorer. See my Visual Studio tips article for instructions on how to create new shortcuts (section 3 – Make New Shortcuts).

Aaron Lerch shared a tip on how to use Powershell to perform search-and-replace on an entire folder hierarchy.

If like me, you have heard about SubSonic but don’t know much about it, Kent Sharkey’s Introduction to SubSonic (Dotnetslackers) provides a quick primer.

Software And Tools

Did you know that something called Robocopy (short for Robust File Copy, not Robot Copy), is the new XCOPY? It’s a standard tool in Windows Vista and is also available as part of the Windows Resource Kit. Via Don Box’s Spoutlet on Pluralsight.

I recently tried and liked GhostDoc very much. It’s a free Visual Studio add-in to help write XML documentation comments. Roland Weigelt wrote a nice intro article on GhostDoc on DotnetSlackers here.

SyncBackSE is a great folder synchronization utility. It has tons of features… maybe even a little bit on the bloated side. It costs $30 for a single license. If you just want something simple, Microsoft’s free SyncToy may do the trick for you.

Gadgets

From CES, it looks like Blu-ray will be the winner of the HD format war. No, the war is not completely over, but this was the landing at Normandy… so to speak. The loss is just too great for the HD-DVD camp to recover.

.NET, C#, Programming

Jeff Atwood (Coding Horror)’s article The Great Browser JavaScript Showdown has benchmarks of Javascript performance of the top Internet browsers. I am a little surprised that IE7 came out at the bottom.